Once a week, Sara Murray puts on a headscarf to cover her hair, and a billowing shirt and pants to cover her ankles and wrists, and takes a bus to a small public building near the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community where she once lived, before the divorce that changed her life.

There, she checks in with two religious social workers, charged by the rabbinical courts with supervising her visits with her six children, now aged 8 to 18. She tries in every way she can to reach out to the four boys and two girls who’ve been taught that she’s brought shame to their family. When she brings them food, they’re scared to eat it. When she offers them gifts, they refuse to take them.

Murray, who was born in the United States and has joint U.S.-Israeli citizenship, isn’t a criminal. Nor has she engaged in any behavior that would cause her shame in a modern, Westernized society like the United States or Israel. Her only offense was seeking a divorce in an ultra-religious community whose repressive policies, particularly on the role of women, are deeply offensive to most Israelis and other Westerners.

The government doesn’t stand up to cases like mine because they don’t want to go against the rabbinical court.

But, for having once joined the Haredi, she can’t break free of its laws. Israel’s government, seeking to appease the ultra-Orthodox parties that now make up a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, has only empowered its religious courts. And, by both law and treaty, the United States must honor the rulings of Israel’s rabbinical courts whose domain includes marriage and divorce.

With presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton slated to speak at AIPAC this week, the complexity of the U.S.-Israel relationship is once again in the news (a complexity, one could argue, that Trump does not appear to have thought much about). While the two countries have long had a symbiotic foreign policy arrangement, they have wrestled in the past about Israel’s domestic agenda. (Even Hillary Clinton in in 2011 gave a rare public rebuke to Israel about its unfair treatment of women.) Because, as Murray’s story shows, one of our staunchest allies and biggest beneficiaries does not always adhere to the liberal social and political standards Americans hold dear.

Ironically, it had been Netanyahu who, when briefly relieved of his reliance on the ultra-religious parties through a deal with the newly formed, centrist Yesh Atid party in 2013, began to roll back laws, especially dealing with women, that were in place to appease religious extremists. In June of that year, the Knesset approved a law that would, for the first time, add women to the committee that selects rabbinical judges. In November, the Knesset passed legislation that would raise the minimum age to marry from 17 to 18. In March of 2014 it approved a law that would eliminate the ultra-Orthodox exemption to military service. And later that year, Netanyahu’s cabinet adopted a law that liberalized the conversion process so that immigrants could more easily assimilate into Jewish life.

What resulted during the 2013-2015 government was nothing short of a domestic revolution, and it was a long time coming. But what followed was a shocking disappointment to Murray and thousands of other women under the thumb of rabbinical courts that bear more resemblance to Sharia law than Western tribunals.

Benjamin Netanyahu seized on a chance to rebuild his far-right coalition and brought the ultra-Orthodox parties back into power | Sebastian Scheiner/AFP via Getty Images

After his surprisingly strong performance in the election of March 17, 2015, based primarily on his hawkish national security policies, Netanyahu seized on a chance to rebuild his far-right coalition and brought the ultra-Orthodox parties back into power.

Immediately, he began rolling back the rollbacks—restoring a historic inequity.

In late April of 2015, just days before the ultra-Orthodox parties were planning to announce their deal to join Netanyahu’s coalition, as a condition of their support, the law requiring the Haredi join in the country’s requirement of military service, which was championed by Yesh Atid, was effectively reversed. Two months later, the bill making religious conversions easier was derailed by Netanyahu’s cabinet. The cabinet also approved the transfer of the rabbinical courts from the justice ministry to the ultra-Orthodox controlled religious services ministry.

For Murray and hundreds of women in her position, stripped of their rights by rabbinical courts, it was a triumph of ancient edicts over human rights—a victory for a powerful religious minority that for too long had been allowed to ignore the rule of law.

“They have so much strength to be able to do whatever they want to do towards women like me,” Murray said, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition government and the policies of the ultra-Orthodox that it adopted. “The government doesn’t stand up to cases like mine because they don’t want to go against the rabbinical court.”

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a Yale Law School Fulbright Scholar who chairs Israel’s Rackman Center, which advocates for an end to discrimination against women, says that there is clear bias in divorce cases against the non-religious parent within the rabbinical court.

“We know of many stories like [Murray’s],” she said. “There is a phenomena of children being given by the rabbinical courts to the parents who are most observant.”

There is a phenomena of children being given by the rabbinical courts to the parents who are most observant.

Naomi Paiss of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit, committed to social change within Israel, agreed.

“They want control of the personal sphere—marriage, divorce, burial,” she said, speaking of the ultra-Orthodox parties. “No matter who you are, your personal life is held hostage to your religion.”

And there’s an extra source of outrage in the fact that the United States, under the Hague treaty governing family law in most advanced countries, is obliged to enforce the judgments of religious courts in Israel; the only exception is for “grave harm” to the child, which rarely gets invoked.

Michael Helfand, associate professor at Pepperdine School of Law and associate director of Jewish Studies, said even American citizens who become involved in groups like the Haredi become subject to their laws.

“There are supposed to be safeguards, and sometimes they don’t seem to be working,” he said, of the protections U.S courts are supposed to impose before rubber-stamping religious agreements. “There are some pretty awful stories out there about parents who are unable to see their children because they left the faith. It pricks your insides out.”

***

Sara Murray started out just like any other rebellious 16 year-old American teenager living in upscale Westport, Connecticut. In 1995, on a trip to visit her stepsister in Boston, she showed up wearing tall lace-up boots, a short skirt, and her shoulder peeking out from beneath an oversized sweatshirt. Her cropped brownish hair framed a playful face. She smoked cigarettes.

Within just one year, she was married, pregnant and living in a Haredi community just outside of Jerusalem.

She had quit cigarettes and a whole lot more. The Haredim had many rules—no dancing, Internet, newspapers or outside influences of any kind. She was required to wear sleeves to her wrists, a skirt to her ankles, and leggings. Her hair was completely hidden beneath a head covering. No matter how hot the day, for 16 years, this was how she would dress.

The practice of gender separation, pervasive in Haredi communities, was ultimately struck down by Israeli courts as it related to public transportation.

At first this new life was a welcome change for her.

Her mother Henya, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, grew up in Israel. Following her divorce, and having struggled for several years with mental illness, she returned to Israel with Sara, then 16, in tow. However, she was unable to provide for her daughter, and at one point the two were homeless for several weeks, sleeping along the beaches behind the Tel Aviv hotels that line the Mediterranean.

It was there where Sara would meet her future husband Uri. She would visit him at his family owned restaurant near the hotels. He couldn’t help but notice the pretty girl who was always hungry. He was kind and would make sure that she and her mother had something to eat.

Like nearly 90 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, Uri grew up secular, and was when he first met Sara. But at the age of 19 he decided to join a Haredi community.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Belz Hasidim take part in the celebration of the Jewish feast of Tu Bishvat (or Tree New Year) on January 25, 2016 in Jerusalem | Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

“We were young,” he said, explaining his turn toward religion.

Sara was months away from the legal age of marriage, which was 17, but the ultimatum from Uri’s rabbi was clear: If she wanted to continue to see him, she would have to drop out of high school and get married. It seemed extreme, but it was what she thought she wanted—a chance to start again.

“At first it looked exciting and beautiful,” she said.

But eventually, as she traveled among different Haredi communities, she began to see a very different reality.

One of those communities was Bnai Brak, an Orthodox enclave where very religious men and women walked on different sides of the streets so as not to brush against each other in passing, and where female transit passengers sat in the back of the bus and entered and exited through a rear door.

The practice of gender separation, pervasive in Haredi communities, was ultimately struck down by Israeli courts as it related to public transportation. This was the case that attracted the attention of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, in 2011, said it was “reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” a statement for which she herself was roundly criticized by Israeli government officials.

Mike Ross is a Boston based attorney and former president of the Boston City Council. Ross regularly contributes to the Boston Globe. Follow him @mikeforboston